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Tales of a New Jerusalem #3
Modernity Britain, 1957-62
David Kynaston's history of post-war Britain has so far taken us from the radically reforming Labour governments of the late 1940s in Austerity Britain and through the growing prosperity of Family Britain's more placid 1950s. Now Modernity Britain 1957-62 sees the coming of a new Zeitgeist as Kynaston gets up close to a turbulent era in which the speed of social change accelerated.
The late 1950s to early 1960s was an action-packed, often dramatic time in which the contours of modern Britain began to take shape. These were the 'never had it so good' years, when the Carry On film series got going, and films like Room at the Top and the first soaps like Coronation Street and Z Cars brought the working class to the centre of the national frame; when CND galvanised the progressive middle class; when 'youth' emerged as a cultural force; when the Notting Hill riots made race and immigration an inescapable reality; and when 'meritocracy' became the buzz word of the day. In this period, the traditional norms of morality were perceived as under serious threat (Lady Chatterley's Lover freely on sale after the famous case), and traditional working-class culture was changing (wakes weeks in decline, the end of the maximum wage for footballers). The greatest change, though, concerned urban redevelopment: city centres were being yanked into the age of the motor car, slum clearance was intensified, and the skyline became studded with brutalist high-rise blocks. Some of this transformation was necessary, but too much would destroy communities and leave a harsh, fateful legacy.
This profoundly important story of the transformation of Britain as it arrived at the brink of a new world is brilliantly told through diaries, letters newspapers and a rich haul of other sources and published in one magnificent paperback volume for the first time.
The late 1950s to early 1960s was an action-packed, often dramatic time in which the contours of modern Britain began to take shape. These were the 'never had it so good' years, when the Carry On film series got going, and films like Room at the Top and the first soaps like Coronation Street and Z Cars brought the working class to the centre of the national frame; when CND galvanised the progressive middle class; when 'youth' emerged as a cultural force; when the Notting Hill riots made race and immigration an inescapable reality; and when 'meritocracy' became the buzz word of the day. In this period, the traditional norms of morality were perceived as under serious threat (Lady Chatterley's Lover freely on sale after the famous case), and traditional working-class culture was changing (wakes weeks in decline, the end of the maximum wage for footballers). The greatest change, though, concerned urban redevelopment: city centres were being yanked into the age of the motor car, slum clearance was intensified, and the skyline became studded with brutalist high-rise blocks. Some of this transformation was necessary, but too much would destroy communities and leave a harsh, fateful legacy.
This profoundly important story of the transformation of Britain as it arrived at the brink of a new world is brilliantly told through diaries, letters newspapers and a rich haul of other sources and published in one magnificent paperback volume for the first time.
872 pages, Paperback
First published November 27, 2012
19 people are currently reading
617 people want to read
About the author
David Kynaston
44 books79 followersDavid Kynaston was born in Aldershot in 1951. He has been a professional historian since 1973 and has written eighteen books, including The City of London (1994-2001), a widely acclaimed four-volume history, and W.G.'s Birthday Party, an account of the Gentleman vs. the Players at Lord's in July 1898. He is the author of Austerity Britain, 1945-51, the first title in a series of books covering the history of post-war Britain (1945-1979) under the collective title "Tales of a New Jerusalem".
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Displaying 1 - 28 of 28 reviews
October 10, 2019
I would love to see David Kynaston’s library, it most be vast.
July 1, 2022
This is a towering achievement following on after ‘Austerity Britain’ & ‘Family Britain’ to give a beautifully clear, detailed, nuanced examination of recent British History, social, economic & political. I was shocked at the strength and widespread nature of racism in Britain in the late 50s, the misogyny, the day to prejudices about class and education. And it brought back memories of the years when we first arrived from HK: the tribal nature of neighbourhoods, the arrival of TV, cars, new fangled supermarkets. An outstanding examination of who we, the British, are and how we got here.
Want to read
February 9, 2016Excellent review to give you a flavor of the book: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/25/boo...
July 29, 2020
Love David Kynaston’s social history series, but reading this at the height of the pandemic I was envious of the 1960s citizens’ freedom. Oh to go to see Ipswich Town win the league and then take the family for a week at Butlin’s in Clacton, tearing up the ballroom floor night after night.
June 28, 2025
I wonder how many other people, like me, have got this far in? I make it around 2500 pages, all written in the author’s engaging and exhaustive style. A Northern Wind, the next volume, is a mere 704 pages, but then it only covers 3½ years, if that. His lists of what is happening on particular days (or weeks) are always entertaining, throwing up so many juxtapositions. In this particular volume, entering stage left, we have a certain beat combo from Liverpool. Kynaston drops in on them now and then, making this like a companion annexe to Lewisohn. Here, John and Paul are encountering each other at a church fete; there, they’re playing at the Casbah, the Cavern, the Indra. Waystations, as familiar to people of a certain age as you’ve never had it so good, the Suez crisis, and the Profumo affair. Still, you get a little chill when you get to I don’t like your tie.
It’s happening! It’s really happening. 1963 will see the explosion.
So. Given that I’ve already talked about some of this stuff, what else is there? The slow and painful liberalisation of society with regard to homosexuality. A change in the law is a long way off, but the chattering classes are already fairly blasé, including some newspapers, even as the mass of people are still expressing disgust in the strongest terms. As such, the Dirk Bogard film Victim (1961) is a landmark.
Another way in which the majority of the public were behind concerned the death penalty. The last judicial hanging was in 1964, so we’re a couple of years from abolition. Towards the end of this book, Kynaston mentions the A6 murder, and the execution of James Hanratty in 1962. He doesn’t mention (yet) the years of campaigning from those who claimed he was innocent. It was certainly a confusing case, though DNA seems to have settled it in the end. Ultimately, they put the guy to death without really being sure, and that’s the point.
Talking of campaigning. It always strikes you that certain people seemed to participate in protests and you do wonder whether they were manipulated, or had another agenda. In the case of Hanratty, you had Paul Foot and Ludovic Kennedy, and even the BBC’s Panorama. Useful idiots? Talking of which, it’s embarrassing to read of people like Michael Foot and Tony Benn among many others praising the Soviets’ “economic miracle” to the skies in the late 50s and early 60s, even as the Soviet Union’s planned economy was crumbling and people were going cold and hungry. Foot (M) was later alleged to be a Soviet asset, but all of these people praising Moscow and predicting the end of Capitalism were being duped. The same is unfortunately true of many of those in the anti-nuclear movement. CND started in 1958, which is covered by this book. It was very useful for the Soviets to have these agitators for peace (including, ultimately, people like me) in the West. As we know too well, the “missile gap” was a bit of a myth. I don’t know where I fall now on the nuclear issue. I’m still in favour of disarmament. I’d say unilaterally, too, except I also don’t believe our missiles would even work. Is there even anything inside them? Anyway, my magpie brain is pleased with the juxtaposition of the Windscale Fire in October 1957 and the first Aldermaston marches a few months later.
What else? I’ve already talked about planning and construction and the big firms who benefited—and eventually took over most of the so-called planning. Reading about it all really made me think about Dunstable (my hometown) and how I never knew it as the traditional old market town it used to be. In my time, it was already a road-widened, heart-ripped-out mess of muddled thinking and backhanders. Everything designed to make life easy for the motorist—even at a time when they were a small minority of the population. Modernity always seems to end up being the destruction of human-scale things and the promotion of individualist forms of transport. And those buildings they put up in the 60s, they’re the ones with the crumbling concrete. The town library I used to visit as a youth has recently been pulled down. Lasted 60 years.
I know what’s next, too, because I’ve read On the Cusp: fucking Beecham and his chopped logic, not understanding how the branch lines on the railways worked. Even in my youth, I regretted the loss of Dunstable’s train station(s). The shame of it was, the train never did take you into the town centre, and maybe that was the problem. But the ghost of the Town Sta. (see map above) haunted my childhood. I walked those mostly abandoned tracks many a time as a teenager (and in my 20s) all the way to that second red dot at Dunstable North, where the bridge over the A5 had been removed and the tracks ended in empty space.
The front cover of this book features a family (oddly, with just the one living room chair) sitting together watching the television. The coming of ITV towards the end of the previous volume presaged a step-up in popular shows. In this volume, Kynaston covers the coming of Coronation Street; Danny Blanchflower refusing to appear on This is Your Life; the very last (and first) season of Hancock, which includes “The Radio Ham” and “The Blood Donor”; people complaining about Morecambe and Wise not being funny; Dixon of Dock Green; and, crucially, Z Cars. I can still hum the theme tune, I can still see the Ford Zephyr. Z Cars was so successful that it was still on when I was a kid, but then so was Dixon.
Finally, we can’t leave Kynaston without talking about the racism. As the numbers of people migrating to Britain stepped up, so did the rhetoric. We’re a few years away from Rivers of Blood, but there are plenty of dissenting voices, including one of Kynaston’s diarists, who goes from being a seemingly decent individual with an interest in theatre to a raving hater, spitting N-words all over his diary pages. It’s all a salutary lesson in how politicians have never, ever, told the truth about immigration, and how some people have never accepted that some essential jobs would never get done without immigrants. It’s all a bit depressing: a “debate” that has been looping around since 1950-something, forever and ever.
Evenin’ all.
It’s happening! It’s really happening. 1963 will see the explosion.
So. Given that I’ve already talked about some of this stuff, what else is there? The slow and painful liberalisation of society with regard to homosexuality. A change in the law is a long way off, but the chattering classes are already fairly blasé, including some newspapers, even as the mass of people are still expressing disgust in the strongest terms. As such, the Dirk Bogard film Victim (1961) is a landmark.
Another way in which the majority of the public were behind concerned the death penalty. The last judicial hanging was in 1964, so we’re a couple of years from abolition. Towards the end of this book, Kynaston mentions the A6 murder, and the execution of James Hanratty in 1962. He doesn’t mention (yet) the years of campaigning from those who claimed he was innocent. It was certainly a confusing case, though DNA seems to have settled it in the end. Ultimately, they put the guy to death without really being sure, and that’s the point.
Talking of campaigning. It always strikes you that certain people seemed to participate in protests and you do wonder whether they were manipulated, or had another agenda. In the case of Hanratty, you had Paul Foot and Ludovic Kennedy, and even the BBC’s Panorama. Useful idiots? Talking of which, it’s embarrassing to read of people like Michael Foot and Tony Benn among many others praising the Soviets’ “economic miracle” to the skies in the late 50s and early 60s, even as the Soviet Union’s planned economy was crumbling and people were going cold and hungry. Foot (M) was later alleged to be a Soviet asset, but all of these people praising Moscow and predicting the end of Capitalism were being duped. The same is unfortunately true of many of those in the anti-nuclear movement. CND started in 1958, which is covered by this book. It was very useful for the Soviets to have these agitators for peace (including, ultimately, people like me) in the West. As we know too well, the “missile gap” was a bit of a myth. I don’t know where I fall now on the nuclear issue. I’m still in favour of disarmament. I’d say unilaterally, too, except I also don’t believe our missiles would even work. Is there even anything inside them? Anyway, my magpie brain is pleased with the juxtaposition of the Windscale Fire in October 1957 and the first Aldermaston marches a few months later.
What else? I’ve already talked about planning and construction and the big firms who benefited—and eventually took over most of the so-called planning. Reading about it all really made me think about Dunstable (my hometown) and how I never knew it as the traditional old market town it used to be. In my time, it was already a road-widened, heart-ripped-out mess of muddled thinking and backhanders. Everything designed to make life easy for the motorist—even at a time when they were a small minority of the population. Modernity always seems to end up being the destruction of human-scale things and the promotion of individualist forms of transport. And those buildings they put up in the 60s, they’re the ones with the crumbling concrete. The town library I used to visit as a youth has recently been pulled down. Lasted 60 years.
I know what’s next, too, because I’ve read On the Cusp: fucking Beecham and his chopped logic, not understanding how the branch lines on the railways worked. Even in my youth, I regretted the loss of Dunstable’s train station(s). The shame of it was, the train never did take you into the town centre, and maybe that was the problem. But the ghost of the Town Sta. (see map above) haunted my childhood. I walked those mostly abandoned tracks many a time as a teenager (and in my 20s) all the way to that second red dot at Dunstable North, where the bridge over the A5 had been removed and the tracks ended in empty space.
The front cover of this book features a family (oddly, with just the one living room chair) sitting together watching the television. The coming of ITV towards the end of the previous volume presaged a step-up in popular shows. In this volume, Kynaston covers the coming of Coronation Street; Danny Blanchflower refusing to appear on This is Your Life; the very last (and first) season of Hancock, which includes “The Radio Ham” and “The Blood Donor”; people complaining about Morecambe and Wise not being funny; Dixon of Dock Green; and, crucially, Z Cars. I can still hum the theme tune, I can still see the Ford Zephyr. Z Cars was so successful that it was still on when I was a kid, but then so was Dixon.
Finally, we can’t leave Kynaston without talking about the racism. As the numbers of people migrating to Britain stepped up, so did the rhetoric. We’re a few years away from Rivers of Blood, but there are plenty of dissenting voices, including one of Kynaston’s diarists, who goes from being a seemingly decent individual with an interest in theatre to a raving hater, spitting N-words all over his diary pages. It’s all a salutary lesson in how politicians have never, ever, told the truth about immigration, and how some people have never accepted that some essential jobs would never get done without immigrants. It’s all a bit depressing: a “debate” that has been looping around since 1950-something, forever and ever.
Evenin’ all.
October 1, 2024
These are not quick books to read if you want to thoroughly take in the detail, and given the work put into each volume, and the benefits that immersing yourself brings, it would clearly be a waste not to.
Modernity Britain takes the reader through a fascinating period of change in Britain's history through the late 50s and into the early 60s. Consumer spending rises, fridges washing machines and other material goods become widespread and there is an emerging new culture in music, books, film, theatre and art. But how much did things really change for the majority of the population and was it really the start of a more meritocratic society ?
It will be interesting how this question develops in the forthcoming volumes but the answer to date is probably no.
It is interesting to also consider how many of the major issues of the day in the late 50s/early 60s are still major issues today. The answer is a great number with familiar themes being how to tackle the stop/go economy, lack of economic growth, inflation and immigration. Amazingly we are even in during this period trying to get a handle on what our relationship with Europe should be. C'est la vie !
Modernity Britain takes the reader through a fascinating period of change in Britain's history through the late 50s and into the early 60s. Consumer spending rises, fridges washing machines and other material goods become widespread and there is an emerging new culture in music, books, film, theatre and art. But how much did things really change for the majority of the population and was it really the start of a more meritocratic society ?
It will be interesting how this question develops in the forthcoming volumes but the answer to date is probably no.
It is interesting to also consider how many of the major issues of the day in the late 50s/early 60s are still major issues today. The answer is a great number with familiar themes being how to tackle the stop/go economy, lack of economic growth, inflation and immigration. Amazingly we are even in during this period trying to get a handle on what our relationship with Europe should be. C'est la vie !
June 10, 2018
Another brilliant social history, the third (and I believe, the final) in the series. What is so amazing about this is that 1958-62 was a time when there were few memorable events. Suez had happened, and Beatlemania, the Kennedys, etc, all lay in the future. However, he makes it all so interesting, and I got a real sense of how the country changed dramatically over those few years into one which a 2018 time-traveller would vaguely recognise: Police and hospital dramas on TV, social and racial unrest, bigotry, sexism, concerns over inadequate housing, consumerism, computers, Grammar school debates: it's all here. I also got a real sense of the erosion of deference towards one's social 'betters', and an appreciation of the paradox that in spite of this, the privileged classes continue to dominate society. But, underneath it all, there is a sense of greater opportunity. I suppose we will all have our own views on whether that opportunity has been taken.
November 19, 2022
A thoroughly enjoyable, if slightly skittering, read which has considerably enhanced and provided nuance to my understanding of the world I was born into. I had the ridiculous sense that the book must surely be building up to the big event of my birth (although as it turns out, David Kynaston seems to have thought that the year actually requires a whole book to itself...) In this volume of the great Tales of a New Jerusalem project, you really do feel that sense of a New Jerusalem (the hills being covered in high rise blocks...)
As before, the style is not knowing, except insofar as he appreciates whose perspectives we might be interested in hearing, because of who they became later. It is remarkable (and generally demoralising) to see the parallels between then and now, the more readily expressed racism never ceasing to shock. (Occasionally it feels as though one has fallen into a bad bit of Twitter)
As before, the style is not knowing, except insofar as he appreciates whose perspectives we might be interested in hearing, because of who they became later. It is remarkable (and generally demoralising) to see the parallels between then and now, the more readily expressed racism never ceasing to shock. (Occasionally it feels as though one has fallen into a bad bit of Twitter)
December 22, 2022
I bought this book and started reading with great enthusiasm because now, living in the UK, I would love to get into its capillary veins and learn everything there is to learn about it. They say, "be careful what you wish for". Kynaston, maybe to others' pleasure but my agony, writes about everything, from play crits to individual accounts of accountants, housewives, and workers. I wouldn't have anything against this, for sure, if they were used sparingly and towards a summative discourse. Therefore, regrettably, I had to stop reading around one-third of the book. I honestly can't think any non-brit younger than 50 could enjoy this book thoroughly. Still, I hope to get back to it someday, maybe not to tackle it entirely but use it as a reference book.
January 14, 2024
A very interesting and easy to follow history 9f the late 50's through to the early 60's. The Tory government had been in power for years and Labour was not yet the peoples choice because of links to Communisium and the control of the Unions. But it was a time of change and Kynaston charts that through the extensive use of diary extracts from all kinds of people. Popular culture was taking off through the television and communities was being disbanded as slums were cleared and the move to the high rise flats and out of town estates occurred.
A fascinating easy read with lots os social comment.
A fascinating easy read with lots os social comment.
November 12, 2024
I’ve now completed all of the volumes of David Kynaston’s post war history of Britain and have very much enjoyed all of them, particularly as they mirror my own childhood and youth and, therefore, summon up a lot of nostalgic memories. The only criticism I would make is that the sections on the post war planning, reconstruction and architecture were far too long drawn out and detailed for me.
November 13, 2021
Detailed social and cultural history of mid century Britain come to a close.
April 3, 2022
A good trip down memory lane
August 16, 2022
Absolutely brilliant insights into life in the UK over those 5 years. My 9nly caveat is too much focus on what is obviously a topic of special interest for the author: urban redevelopment.
February 25, 2017
What can you say? David Kynaston has created a new kind of social history, told almost exclusively through contemporary materials, published (books, magazines, newspapers) and unpublished (diaries). He is writing a history of Britain during the era of consensus politics (1945-1979) which is set to be longer than Proust. We've reached the mid point and Britain has embraced the modern in art, culture, and life. But it has embraced it in a singularly British way - cautiously and a little clumsily. Stand out sections here are chapters on the Labour party, and its response to massive defeat. Should it be a preserve of ideological principle or should it try and get elected? (Debate sound familiar?) And also a chapters on the economy and on education. If there is a fault in the books it is that there is too much on planning, architecture and housing, but the book is masterful on all issues relating to class - which in Britain is most of them - and on contemporary culture. You find yourself scanning the web for news of the next installment.
June 24, 2015
A long book (820 pages with footnotes) covering a short period (1957-62). This is the 3rd volume of David Kynaston's 'New Jerusalem' sequence of books covering the history of post war Britain. This period of history is an increasingly crowded market but Kynaston stands out. His books are more social history than political or cultural history. He has a good knack of assimilating a wide variety of sources to give little 'pen pictures' of days & weeks during the period and focuses on what the ordinary person thinks & does (using a lot of the Mass Observation diaries of the time). Aside from a tendency to describe certain history books as 'magisterial' (a counted 2 uses in as many pages) there really isn't anything to fault. He is planning to take the series up to 1979 (and no further) and I am definitely along for the ride.
January 7, 2025
Very dense, very long but truly fascinating book that manages to both macro and micro what was going on in Britain as it moved into the modern age. Using diaries, politician's public and private words, city council minutes, reviews of movies and TV shows from the time, etc., Kynaston points a truly vivid you are there portrayal of all the forces pulling Britain forward. From the clearing of slums to create high rises for the working class to the DH Lawrence trial to the heady victory and ultimate defeat of the Tories, to the issues of racism and immigration, to what was going on in the world of soccer and cricket, Kynaston brings it all to live.
A wonderful, big hearted book
A wonderful, big hearted book
May 11, 2016
In long, fact-chocked sentences and paragraphs running through a whirlwind of topics, Kynaston paints an impressive portrait of Britain fully out of the era of wartime privation and on the cusp of a new post-imperial identity. He weaves newspaper articles, government accounts and personal diaries to deal with such topics as the brittleness of economic controls and the emergence of commercial society, the leap into slum clearance and motorway-building, the gestation of rock 'n' roll, and a great deal more.
August 3, 2016
Great to read a very modern social history and a good reminder that perceptions of what history was about, even in a period which is so close to us chronologically, are muddled, often wrong and always limited by the present. Kynaston writes simply and easily, ranging widely but meticulously through very specific periods of modern history. Have to go back and read the first volume Austerity Britain.
April 3, 2014
Follows the pattern of Kynaston's earlier books. Snippets from diaries, newspapers, low culture and high art leading to more detailed discussions of key issues of the day. If anything, Modernity Britain has more of the lighter material than the earlier books, which is perhaps a shame, but there is still plenty of in depth discussion.
March 14, 2015
Land I grew up in.
This was an excellent book, the last of the trio by this author. Again it is very well researched , and written. To me it brought back so many memories of my childhood , in the 1950s , in England. So much that I had forgotten came rushing back. I highly recommend it.
This was an excellent book, the last of the trio by this author. Again it is very well researched , and written. To me it brought back so many memories of my childhood , in the 1950s , in England. So much that I had forgotten came rushing back. I highly recommend it.
Want to read
September 19, 2014KOBOBOOKS
Reviewed by The Guardian (18 Sep 2014)
Reviewed by The Guardian (18 Sep 2014)
December 24, 2016
I especially liked his use of citizens' diaries and the ongoing story of old neighborhoods being destroyed and replaced with tower blocks and skyscrapers. I'm burning to read the next volume, Opportunity Britain. I can't find even a hint that it is being written.
Read
August 29, 2015Really looking forward to this. Must we really wait till November?
February 13, 2014
Excellent addition to a ground-breaking history of post-war Britain
April 14, 2015
Another great slice of modern history. I love this series and can't wait for the next installment!
January 26, 2015
This book is for those that lived in that time. To an outsider it doesn't mean much.
Displaying 1 - 28 of 28 reviews